BANGOR – Tom Allen got a prime opportunity Monday to talk publicly about one of the issues he has made central to his U.S. Senate campaign.

And in doing so, he again criticized Sen. Susan Collins for her record when she was chairwoman of the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Allen, the Democrat who represents Maine’s 1st Congressional District, spoke to about 35 people at the Bangor Foreign Policy Forum held early Monday afternoon at Bangor Public Library. Allen has been a strong critic of the war in Iraq, both in how it has been pursued by President Bush and in how Congress has dealt with the Bush administration’s wartime policies.

Allen, who is challenging the Republican Collins this fall for her Senate seat, said the then-Republican-led Congress and Collins in particular should have done more before 2006 to investigate the military’s preparation for the reconstruction effort. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee was supposed to oversee the work of contractors who wasted billions of taxpayer dollars in Iraq, he said, but for 31/2 years Collins “refused” to hold hearings on the issue.

“If she [had] only held a few hearings, it would have exposed that the administration’s oversight was woefully inadequate,” Allen said. “The consequence of that has been to make what happened in Iraq a lot worse, a lot worse than it needed to be.”

Allen has criticized Collins on that particular issue before, and Collins staffers have responded publicly to Allen’s claim. On Monday, the Collins campaign again defended the senator’s record and criticized Allen for missing votes in the House of Representatives.

Under Collins’ leadership, the committee oversaw a multitude of issues, including creation of the Homeland Security Department, postal reform and ethics legislation, among other issues, according to Collins staffers. Despite Allen’s suggestion, they said, Collins did investigate contracting in Iraq and in 2005 she co-sponsored legislation that allowed Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, to continue his work.

Allen may be making hay of Collins’ record, but his voting record could be viewed as inadequate, according to the Collins campaign. When the House voted in March 2007 on holding contractors accountable for their job performance, Allen missed the vote, they said.

The Allen campaign has acknowledged he missed the vote but said it passed by a large margin, which Allen anticipated, and that Allen was in a classified meeting about Army readiness when it was held.

The Collins campaign said Monday that Allen is continuing to criticize Collins because he is more than 20 percent behind in the polls.

“It’s no surprise, with Congressman Allen’s campaign struggling to take hold, they continue to launch these misleading claims,” Elissa Davidson, spokeswoman for Collins’ campaign, said in a prepared statement.

The Maine Democratic Party also jumped into the fray Monday, criticizing Collins for a video posted on YouTube that takes Allen to task for missing votes in Congress. Allen has made 98 percent of the votes in the House, the party said in a prepared statement, and missed votes to attend family funerals and to be with his ill wife.

Allen also indirectly touched upon the issue of his ties to MoveOn.org, the anti-war group that has been widely criticized for calling Gen. David Petraeus, the American military commander in Iraq, Gen. “Betray Us” in an ad it ran last year in The New York Times. The Collins campaign has said Allen should be held accountable for his contributions from MoveOn, which has funneled more than $365,000 to Allen’s campaign, more than any other candidate for federal office.

Allen did not bring up MoveOn on Monday, but did talk about Petraeus.

“He’s the best general we’ve ever had in charge in Iraq,” Allen told attendees at the forum.

But, he added, Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the American ambassador to Iraq, have been used for the administration’s political purposes, he said. Bush is refusing to remove troops from Iraq so that, when it happens under his successor, he can disavow any possible negative consequences, Allen said.

“This is teeing up a blame game, in my opinion,” he said.

Allen also spoke at Monday’s forum about the ongoing effort to fight terrorism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He said the administration “dropped the ball” in fighting terrorism when it turned its attention from Afghanistan to Iraq and that there needs to be a two-state solution for establishing peace in Israel. No solution will work without America guaranteeing Israel’s security, he said, but both America and Europe will need to help pay for reconstruction in a Palestinian state.

Collins is expected to speak before the same forum sometime next month.

btrotter@bangordailynews.net

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